I use TD Canada Trust myself, and I find it to be great - and I'm not the only one who likes it. They don't mention browser compatibility, but I've had no problems in any browsers I've ever used. Mozilla's always worked fine, as has Netscape 4 and IE. Konqueror I don't have, but I'm confident it works. Lynx and w3m I'm not sure about, but I'm installing them on my Linux box now.
Incidentally, I checked their webserver, which tells me 'Server: IBM_HTTP_SERVER/1.3.19.2 Apache/1.3.20 (Unix)'. I found that as interesting as I found the fact that they're using Java servlets - meaning they're using Tomcat (directly, that is, which is a possibility) or WebSphere (more likely). If they're using IBM, I'd be willing to wager they're either running AIX or Linux, but I'm not about to nmap one the largest bank in Canada; somehow, I suspect they'd notice.
Incidentally, the site doesn't work in Lynx or w3m; w3m doesn't even show the login box; lynx shows it, but when it's submitted, you get the same page back. Then again, this happens a lot with lynx, since it's a pretty crappy browser in the first place, but still.
Still, a top-notch site, and a functional one that uses javascript in effective ways, despite not validating through the w3c's validator under any circumstances or Document Types (not that any problems are real problems, mind you; it just seems to be a hodgepodge of new stuff like <link..../> and old stuff like <nobr>).
I think the fact that the phrase 'illegal books' can actually be used in realistic conversation is extremely worrying.
What will happen if copyright keeps getting extended? Will we have 'literary contraband', legal everywhere except the US (and countries whose laws the US 'influences')? Will importing a copy of 1984 that you didn't pay for become a crime for which you can be fined or imprisoned?
I'm not an alarmist, but the way things are going, I may as well be.
Slashdot line: Sweatshops are evil. They exploit the foreign worker. They should be eliminated.
Reality: This is mostly AFL/CIO-initiated propoganda. Sweatshops are hiring foreign workers at low prices because that's the only way they can be competitive. If you want to pay $50 more for your hard drive, go for it...but competition on price is what has driven down wages. Eliminating sweatshops, as some have proposed, wouldn't do anything to help the foreign worker -- they're willing to work at inhumanly low rates because that's the only way they can get enough for food. Wipe the sweatshops out, and they simply starve. The only people to benefit are US unskilled labor, which gets a short term boost in hiring. This is much the same as the H1B item mentioned above.
Having just suffered through a third of a semester of junk on child labour and the like, I'd like to point out some points that are often overlooked.
First of all, sweatshops aren't necessarily just a matter of paying people less. In many cases, you can't just leave and not get paid - they'll have you killed. You don't get any sort of humane treatment (lunch breaks, bathroom breaks, holidays, paid or unpaid, and sometimes even a 7 day work week), you don't get paid well, even factoring in cheaper, smaller economies. Most of the time, it's a large multinational corporation that rakes in billions of dollars before taxes, it usually doesn't pay taxes anyway because of legal loopholes, and the only reason they'd have to raise prices is to keep up huge profits and huge CEO benefits. And besides, can anyone possibly say that e.g. SCSI hard drive prices aren't already artifically inflated?
On a side note, I've found that the drop in price of 'consumer electronics' has, by and large, resulted in most people buying absolute crap, and the most important feature being a low price (which is fine) - people don't understand that with current technology, you can't get quality for cheap. Would you rely on an $800 car? Chances are not, but people go on and on about how you can get a $300 PC, yet for a good system, you pay for it. When you buy cheap goods, it's not because they've cut back wages in some starving village in Indonesia - they never offered wages high enough that they could cut back from in the first place - rather, it's because they're pawning cheap crap off on you.
Vegas' 'flashy splash' is meaningless show and glitter - New York has style, culture, and class, not to mention reputation. Vegas is a scumhole that happened to get rich, but hasn't learned the value of elegance yet.
This makes a very good point. Multicast won't work with a static (request, responce, close) connection like websites (because you won't necesssarily have people downloading the same content at the same time)... but it works great for streaming content. Theoretically, if multicast were implemented properly and universally, it would be easier on bandwidth and server load for everyone to view streaming video than static websites (because the server only needs to send out one multicast stream, except if you hit a limit as to the number of destinations that a packet can have).
Interesting to think that streaming audio and video could be easier on bandwidth than websites...
Sadly, in 1998, the UK abolished the death penalty for all offences. I suppose this is a good thing (I'm anti-death-penalty), but I don't mind treasoners hanging from the rafters. Oh well.
You can't sue people for stating their opinion, or even for criticizing you or your services harshely or unfairly.
Wrong. You can sue people for anything. Stating opinion, being ugly, liking french toast, you name it. ANYTHING. Of course, there's harassment issues and whatever, but you can still do it.
It's up to the legal eagles to make their cases - one for why the litigant should win, one for why not. The person who makes the best point wins.
In a case like this though, I don't think it would be hard to make a good point of telling this guy where to stick it.
The card doesn't have hardware encode, that I know of, but it does have hardware decode (which it uses for DVD playback, among other things), and even the AIW128 had hardware overlay and scaling support for DVD, and even AVI/MPEG under XF4.x.
The AIW isn't necessarily a capture device either, though it can serve that purpose. All I've used it for is watching TV and playing games (PS, etc) on my system. Then again, I've never had the HD space or processor to do anything else.
--Dan
Re:Clusters
on
Tiny Boxen
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You present an interesting but insubstantial point.
The rest of the world hates the idea of DRM - by and large, it's an American idea, and as much as you'd like to think otherwise, American media isn't worth sacrificing freedom for - the few good things that escape do so because they slip under the radar. I could easily (and largely have, already) abandoned American media. I suspect the rest of the world could do so as well. Perhaps the US would see its position as an informational power change.
Unless you've got some seriously processor dependent assembly in your PPC binary there's little that will stop it from running on a POWER chip. The PowerPC instruction set is a subset of the POWER one meaning POWER ostensibily has more instructions besides the ones PowerPC has. It is trivial to compile an app for generic PPC code that will run on every PPC chip you can find.
This is almost true, but not quite. The Power4 has instructions that the PPC does not, and the PPC has instructions the Power4 does not. Neither is a subset of the other.
That being said, you are correct in every other manner. The processors are similar enough that the binaries would end up similar. Would the one run on the other? I doubt it. Would it be close to running if not? Definitely.
Presumably, the claim comes about because anyone could script IDE features into Vim or EMACS. That would be stupid, and a waste of time, but I think that's their logic.
Well, I agree with your points about this being a load of trash, however:
Apple did offer the 10.1 update for download - they just didn't offer it for long. The 'update' is 650 megs, and is basically a 10.1 installer that checks to see if you have 10.0 installed then replaces it. They didn't want to keep having their bandwidth sucked dry.
I think it's a GOOD thing that Slashdot 'let this slip through'. The editors didn't make any comments about it being good or bad, they just posted the news and let people make up their own minds. This is good journalism. They're informing the public about competitors bitching baselessly and unfairly, and I'm glad it was posted. News is news, even if it is unfairly anti-microsoft.
You don't have to consent for a search (in Canada, anyway - they make this very clear), but then, they don't have to let you on the plane. I don't think having your stuff searched for explosives is unreasonable anyway, not in the current political climate in the US (though I think the war fervor is unreasonable, but that's another matter).
Check out the free download> of Maya. You get Maya Complete, a $2,000 USD program (if you buy at their online store) for free, for certain (educational) uses, minus a few features (plugins, I think), and plus watermarks on your stuff - certainly enough to learn on though.
A very sane, very educated philosophy, if you ask me.
The point of HTML preprocessors isn't to make it easier to write HTML, it's to make it easier (possible) to write dynamic HTML on the server end.
Not to mention, the use of mod_perl, PHP, and so on, is often not necessarily to preprocess HTML, but rather to generate it in the first place, sometimes from pieces.
Either way, maybe a new HTML would be nice. I guess we'll see.
This is somewhat analogous to using Perl and mod_perl. If that's the only reason to use Moto, I'd stick with Perl instead.
I think you misunderstand what's happening here.
In 'fast mode', you're using it like mod_perl or PHP, but the next step is to compile it to native code and run it as a binary server module - not interpreted by, but run as. With mod_perl or php, your site is always interpreted by the DSO, but for Moto, your site IS the DSO. This provides a nice speed boost.
I don't know where the poster lives, but as I recall, it's illegal, in Canada, to have a video screen visible from the driver's seat. This presumably doesn't extend to navigational aids though.
As long as he doesn't watch it more than a quick glance on an empty highway or at a stoplight or such, then I don't mind, but otherwise, I'm scared.
Java is being taught because Object-Oriented design is an important thing to learn/use nowadays, it makes sense, and in many situations, it's Right. C++, however, is a kludge, not to mention only half-heartedly OO. Java is the most sensible thing to teach at this point. It's not politics, it's just life, get over it.
GSM uses three frequencies, depending on which bastardization you use: 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz. One is Europe's standard; the other two are used in the US and Canada because the American government enjoys giving away frequencies without stopping to think what they're used for elsewhere in the world. In this case though, I think the Restoftheworldian frequencies are reserved for military use.
Anywho, you can purchase phones that support all frequencies, but they cost more. The Motorola V60 is such a phone, as are any expensive Nokias. You may be looking for a 'world phone', as some people advertise them.
You can also get tri-mode phones. The phone I'm going to pick up next week is such a phone, and has digital 1900 MHz reception if it finds a Telus tower; if not, it looks for a digital NB Tel/Aliant tower (local telco's cheaper PCS service), and if not that, then analog, if any (and most of my country's population is covered by analong at least, with the exception of my roommate's hometown, about which I mock him).
Your best bet is to find a good cellular provider (Verizon in the US), and go in and ask THEM. THey have all the answers about the phones they offer and the services that go with them. Slashdot is a bad place to go for anything but theoretical discussions and anecdotes.
Your premise is absurd. If macs were perfect - and I think they're the closest thing you can get nowadays, make of that what you will - then the computer won't interfere in getting work done. I'm sorry, but I don't use my computer to debug OS issues, I use it to get things accomplished. No crashing, no bugs, no issues, NO PROBLEM! If it lets me get my photo manipulation, movie editing, and essay writing done faster, then hey, so be it, I'm not going to complain.
The computer is a tool. Do you complain your wrench is boring because it never breaks? Your hammer head never falls off the handle so you lose interest in building things? I doubt it.
No one should be interested in tools themselves. Using the tools to do things, or making better tools, yes, but no one gets bored because their tools just work.
The University of New Brunswick has wireless set up all over campus - partly in patches, but they're in the process of building and testing. The whole thing is on a hill, so it's impossible to get decent signal unless you have an AP on every rooftop, but...
So far, there are three networks (student, net128, fcs240), plus an experimental network (comnetunb), which have various access permissions. The library ceilings are adorned with access points, and coverage is getting better as time goes on, though the project is underbudgeted and faculty infighting is making life a pain.
Also, in our city, there's a citynetbn network, which we believe is tied to the city's fibre/wireless network project, as well as dozens of places downtown with APs in various states of insecurity (one can browse one's e-mail at various places downtown), and we have yet to take our laptops to the Regent Mall, but we know there's a Linksys AP hooked up to a Shaw Cable connection in Radio Shack.
Wireless is everywhere, if you know where to look. It's actually pretty amazing; now that the APs and cards are coming down in price, people with laptops and what-have-you are starting to experiment. When we bought our D-Link AP/router/switch/print server/firewall/DHCP server, I got fed up very fast with my roommate getting up and walking around and telling me on IRC where in the house he was. Still, it's great.
If anyone from Fredericton reads this, come visit Albert Street and see if you can find CDSlash.;)
I've found the most important thing to people (including myself) isn't the download speed most of the time, it's the always-on connection. The ability to sit down, check your e-mail, and walk away is great. The ability to use the internet despite your teenaged daughter being on the phone ALL THE TIME is great; the ability to use the phone while your 13-year old l33t h4x0r s0n is fragging his lamer friends on counterstrike is also a bonus.
Also, in Canada, fast download speeds are paying off. One of the largest media companies (CTV) has a cable news channel, but if you have broadband, you can watch the day's stories on-demand on their website. The 'tickers' and so on, like CNN also has, displaying the weather and whatnot are similarly interactive, letting you jump straight to the day's business news or weather reports.
Not to mention that you can listen to the CBC's radio programs (mmm, culture) via the internet.
All in all, broadband is taking off like a rocket here, but these two reasons (always-on and interactive media) are the keys.
Slashdot Mirror
I use TD Canada Trust myself, and I find it to be great - and I'm not the only one who likes it. They don't mention browser compatibility, but I've had no problems in any browsers I've ever used. Mozilla's always worked fine, as has Netscape 4 and IE. Konqueror I don't have, but I'm confident it works. Lynx and w3m I'm not sure about, but I'm installing them on my Linux box now.
d bank.banking.servlet.DefaultServlet - my bookmark for one frame of their frameset (which they use so that people don't copy URLs that will/may later stop working because of logout/site redesign).
.... /> and old stuff like <nobr>).
Incidentally, I checked their webserver, which tells me 'Server: IBM_HTTP_SERVER/1.3.19.2 Apache/1.3.20 (Unix)'. I found that as interesting as I found the fact that they're using Java servlets - meaning they're using Tomcat (directly, that is, which is a possibility) or WebSphere (more likely). If they're using IBM, I'd be willing to wager they're either running AIX or Linux, but I'm not about to nmap one the largest bank in Canada; somehow, I suspect they'd notice.
Incidentally, the site doesn't work in Lynx or w3m; w3m doesn't even show the login box; lynx shows it, but when it's submitted, you get the same page back. Then again, this happens a lot with lynx, since it's a pretty crappy browser in the first place, but still.
For reference, the URL used was https://easyweb37b.tdcanadatrust.com/servlet/ca.t
Still, a top-notch site, and a functional one that uses javascript in effective ways, despite not validating through the w3c's validator under any circumstances or Document Types (not that any problems are real problems, mind you; it just seems to be a hodgepodge of new stuff like <link
--Dan
If you want e-mails from your girlfriend to be special, buy her a webcam for Christmas. Just hope that she never mis-sends to your parents instead.
--Dan
I think the fact that the phrase 'illegal books' can actually be used in realistic conversation is extremely worrying.
What will happen if copyright keeps getting extended? Will we have 'literary contraband', legal everywhere except the US (and countries whose laws the US 'influences')? Will importing a copy of 1984 that you didn't pay for become a crime for which you can be fined or imprisoned?
I'm not an alarmist, but the way things are going, I may as well be.
--Dan
Having just suffered through a third of a semester of junk on child labour and the like, I'd like to point out some points that are often overlooked.
First of all, sweatshops aren't necessarily just a matter of paying people less. In many cases, you can't just leave and not get paid - they'll have you killed. You don't get any sort of humane treatment (lunch breaks, bathroom breaks, holidays, paid or unpaid, and sometimes even a 7 day work week), you don't get paid well, even factoring in cheaper, smaller economies. Most of the time, it's a large multinational corporation that rakes in billions of dollars before taxes, it usually doesn't pay taxes anyway because of legal loopholes, and the only reason they'd have to raise prices is to keep up huge profits and huge CEO benefits. And besides, can anyone possibly say that e.g. SCSI hard drive prices aren't already artifically inflated?
On a side note, I've found that the drop in price of 'consumer electronics' has, by and large, resulted in most people buying absolute crap, and the most important feature being a low price (which is fine) - people don't understand that with current technology, you can't get quality for cheap. Would you rely on an $800 car? Chances are not, but people go on and on about how you can get a $300 PC, yet for a good system, you pay for it. When you buy cheap goods, it's not because they've cut back wages in some starving village in Indonesia - they never offered wages high enough that they could cut back from in the first place - rather, it's because they're pawning cheap crap off on you.
--Dan
Vegas' 'flashy splash' is meaningless show and glitter - New York has style, culture, and class, not to mention reputation. Vegas is a scumhole that happened to get rich, but hasn't learned the value of elegance yet.
--Dan
This makes a very good point. Multicast won't work with a static (request, responce, close) connection like websites (because you won't necesssarily have people downloading the same content at the same time)... but it works great for streaming content. Theoretically, if multicast were implemented properly and universally, it would be easier on bandwidth and server load for everyone to view streaming video than static websites (because the server only needs to send out one multicast stream, except if you hit a limit as to the number of destinations that a packet can have).
Interesting to think that streaming audio and video could be easier on bandwidth than websites...
--Dan
Sadly, in 1998, the UK abolished the death penalty for all offences. I suppose this is a good thing (I'm anti-death-penalty), but I don't mind treasoners hanging from the rafters. Oh well.
--Dan
Not to mention the 'pageid=666' in the URL. Omens abound...
--Dan
You can't sue people for stating their opinion, or even for criticizing you or your services harshely or unfairly.
Wrong. You can sue people for anything. Stating opinion, being ugly, liking french toast, you name it. ANYTHING. Of course, there's harassment issues and whatever, but you can still do it.
It's up to the legal eagles to make their cases - one for why the litigant should win, one for why not. The person who makes the best point wins.
In a case like this though, I don't think it would be hard to make a good point of telling this guy where to stick it.
--Dan
The card doesn't have hardware encode, that I know of, but it does have hardware decode (which it uses for DVD playback, among other things), and even the AIW128 had hardware overlay and scaling support for DVD, and even AVI/MPEG under XF4.x.
The AIW isn't necessarily a capture device either, though it can serve that purpose. All I've used it for is watching TV and playing games (PS, etc) on my system. Then again, I've never had the HD space or processor to do anything else.
--Dan
You present an interesting but insubstantial point.
The rest of the world hates the idea of DRM - by and large, it's an American idea, and as much as you'd like to think otherwise, American media isn't worth sacrificing freedom for - the few good things that escape do so because they slip under the radar. I could easily (and largely have, already) abandoned American media. I suspect the rest of the world could do so as well. Perhaps the US would see its position as an informational power change.
Just a thought.
--Dan
With the coming onslaught of DRM on faster processors, the obvious solution is to find better ways to scale existing hardware products.
I dunno, I would think the obvious solution would be to find sane companies that are working on next-gen processors sans DRM. Maybe I just have a different view.
--Dan
Unless you've got some seriously processor dependent assembly in your PPC binary there's little that will stop it from running on a POWER chip. The PowerPC instruction set is a subset of the POWER one meaning POWER ostensibily has more instructions besides the ones PowerPC has. It is trivial to compile an app for generic PPC code that will run on every PPC chip you can find.
This is almost true, but not quite. The Power4 has instructions that the PPC does not, and the PPC has instructions the Power4 does not. Neither is a subset of the other.
That being said, you are correct in every other manner. The processors are similar enough that the binaries would end up similar. Would the one run on the other? I doubt it. Would it be close to running if not? Definitely.
--Dan
Presumably, the claim comes about because anyone could script IDE features into Vim or EMACS. That would be stupid, and a waste of time, but I think that's their logic.
--Dan
--Dan
You don't have to consent for a search (in Canada, anyway - they make this very clear), but then, they don't have to let you on the plane. I don't think having your stuff searched for explosives is unreasonable anyway, not in the current political climate in the US (though I think the war fervor is unreasonable, but that's another matter).
--Dan
Check out the free download> of Maya. You get Maya Complete, a $2,000 USD program (if you buy at their online store) for free, for certain (educational) uses, minus a few features (plugins, I think), and plus watermarks on your stuff - certainly enough to learn on though.
A very sane, very educated philosophy, if you ask me.
--Dan
The point of HTML preprocessors isn't to make it easier to write HTML, it's to make it easier (possible) to write dynamic HTML on the server end.
Not to mention, the use of mod_perl, PHP, and so on, is often not necessarily to preprocess HTML, but rather to generate it in the first place, sometimes from pieces.
Either way, maybe a new HTML would be nice. I guess we'll see.
--Dan
This is somewhat analogous to using Perl and mod_perl. If that's the only reason to use Moto, I'd stick with Perl instead.
I think you misunderstand what's happening here.
In 'fast mode', you're using it like mod_perl or PHP, but the next step is to compile it to native code and run it as a binary server module - not interpreted by, but run as. With mod_perl or php, your site is always interpreted by the DSO, but for Moto, your site IS the DSO. This provides a nice speed boost.
--Dan
I don't know where the poster lives, but as I recall, it's illegal, in Canada, to have a video screen visible from the driver's seat. This presumably doesn't extend to navigational aids though.
As long as he doesn't watch it more than a quick glance on an empty highway or at a stoplight or such, then I don't mind, but otherwise, I'm scared.
--Dan
Java is being taught because Object-Oriented design is an important thing to learn/use nowadays, it makes sense, and in many situations, it's Right. C++, however, is a kludge, not to mention only half-heartedly OO. Java is the most sensible thing to teach at this point. It's not politics, it's just life, get over it.
--Dan
GSM uses three frequencies, depending on which bastardization you use: 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz. One is Europe's standard; the other two are used in the US and Canada because the American government enjoys giving away frequencies without stopping to think what they're used for elsewhere in the world. In this case though, I think the Restoftheworldian frequencies are reserved for military use.
Anywho, you can purchase phones that support all frequencies, but they cost more. The Motorola V60 is such a phone, as are any expensive Nokias. You may be looking for a 'world phone', as some people advertise them.
You can also get tri-mode phones. The phone I'm going to pick up next week is such a phone, and has digital 1900 MHz reception if it finds a Telus tower; if not, it looks for a digital NB Tel/Aliant tower (local telco's cheaper PCS service), and if not that, then analog, if any (and most of my country's population is covered by analong at least, with the exception of my roommate's hometown, about which I mock him).
Your best bet is to find a good cellular provider (Verizon in the US), and go in and ask THEM. THey have all the answers about the phones they offer and the services that go with them. Slashdot is a bad place to go for anything but theoretical discussions and anecdotes.
Good luck.
--Dan
I think you may have issues... that aside...
Your premise is absurd. If macs were perfect - and I think they're the closest thing you can get nowadays, make of that what you will - then the computer won't interfere in getting work done. I'm sorry, but I don't use my computer to debug OS issues, I use it to get things accomplished. No crashing, no bugs, no issues, NO PROBLEM! If it lets me get my photo manipulation, movie editing, and essay writing done faster, then hey, so be it, I'm not going to complain.
The computer is a tool. Do you complain your wrench is boring because it never breaks? Your hammer head never falls off the handle so you lose interest in building things? I doubt it.
No one should be interested in tools themselves. Using the tools to do things, or making better tools, yes, but no one gets bored because their tools just work.
--Dan
The University of New Brunswick has wireless set up all over campus - partly in patches, but they're in the process of building and testing. The whole thing is on a hill, so it's impossible to get decent signal unless you have an AP on every rooftop, but...
;)
So far, there are three networks (student, net128, fcs240), plus an experimental network (comnetunb), which have various access permissions. The library ceilings are adorned with access points, and coverage is getting better as time goes on, though the project is underbudgeted and faculty infighting is making life a pain.
Also, in our city, there's a citynetbn network, which we believe is tied to the city's fibre/wireless network project, as well as dozens of places downtown with APs in various states of insecurity (one can browse one's e-mail at various places downtown), and we have yet to take our laptops to the Regent Mall, but we know there's a Linksys AP hooked up to a Shaw Cable connection in Radio Shack.
Wireless is everywhere, if you know where to look. It's actually pretty amazing; now that the APs and cards are coming down in price, people with laptops and what-have-you are starting to experiment. When we bought our D-Link AP/router/switch/print server/firewall/DHCP server, I got fed up very fast with my roommate getting up and walking around and telling me on IRC where in the house he was. Still, it's great.
If anyone from Fredericton reads this, come visit Albert Street and see if you can find CDSlash.
--Dan
I've found the most important thing to people (including myself) isn't the download speed most of the time, it's the always-on connection. The ability to sit down, check your e-mail, and walk away is great. The ability to use the internet despite your teenaged daughter being on the phone ALL THE TIME is great; the ability to use the phone while your 13-year old l33t h4x0r s0n is fragging his lamer friends on counterstrike is also a bonus.
Also, in Canada, fast download speeds are paying off. One of the largest media companies (CTV) has a cable news channel, but if you have broadband, you can watch the day's stories on-demand on their website. The 'tickers' and so on, like CNN also has, displaying the weather and whatnot are similarly interactive, letting you jump straight to the day's business news or weather reports.
Not to mention that you can listen to the CBC's radio programs (mmm, culture) via the internet.
All in all, broadband is taking off like a rocket here, but these two reasons (always-on and interactive media) are the keys.
Me, I just want to idle on IRC....
--Dan